This project, led by Center co-director Matt Powers and Sandra Vera-Zambrano (Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City), asks why individuals pursue careers in journalism, given the profession’s increased precarity and contested status as society’s main information arbiter. Based on a decade of research, it explores the production, management, and–for some–dissolution of the belief that journalism careers are worth pursuing.

Publications:

• The Journalist’s Predicament: Attractions, Frustrations, and Upheavals in French and American News Media. In press, Columbia University Press, expected 2023.
• “The Direction and Demographics of Journalists’ Trajectories: Evidence from One American City, 2015-2021.” Journalism Studies, 23(3): 392-411, 2022.
• “What are journalists for today?” In Rethinking Media Research for Changing Societies, edited by Matthew Powers and Adrienne Russell. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
• “The roots of journalistic perception: A Bourdieusian approach to media and class.” In The Routledge Companion to Media and Class, edited by Erika Polson, Lynn Schofield Clark, and Radhika Gajjala. London: Routledge, 2020.
• “Endure, Invest, Ignore: How French and American Journalists React to Economic Constraints and Technological Transformations.” (with Sandra Vera-Zambrano), Journal of Communication 69(3): 320-343, 2019.